Retro-Review: Lowlife's "Permanent Sleep" Is Awake Again

Lowlife

Have you ever liked a band for decades that you didn't even know existed?  I did.

Like everyone, I have had some of my favorite music introduced by someone else.  A friend of mine from the suburbs of Chicago gave me a mix CD back in 1986 that introduced me to music from the prestigious 4AD label that included selections from Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Clan of Xymox, This Mortal Coil, Felt, and a couple of songs "Permanent Sleep" and "Mother Tongue" that were labeled as by an artist named Will Heggie.  I fell in love with this music and started trying to find out as much as I could about them.

As I have said many times in the past, Cocteau Twins have been one of my favorite bands of all time.  I have loved every phase that they have gone through - from the eerie gothic tones of their first album to the pompuous faux-Greek bacchnalia of "Treasure" to the fluffy effervescence of "Victorialand" to the ambient electronica of their latter days.  The first album, "Garlands", still always has a special place in my heart.  It is a dark album with furious bass strumming and scratchy guitars offset by Elizabeth Frasier's nonsensical caterwauls.

During the course of my investigations, I learned that the bassist on "Garlands" was one Will Heggie, a founding member of Cocteau Twins who left after the first album to, as my friend told me, to pursue a solo career.  I really loved those songs by Will Heggie, but I was never able to find them on record, which wasn't too surprising.  Most of the stuff I listened to back then was either indie or import.  In the golden age before the internet, if you didn't live in a cultural mecca like Chicago or New York, such music was hard to find, and one had to save their pennies for excursions to record stores that specialized in imports.

But even after the advent of online music, I couldn't find anything by Will Heggie, or scarecly even a mention of him beyond his connection to Cocteau Twins.  Lo and behold, just recently, I did a research and learned that Will Heggie did not launch into a solo career like I was led to believe.  Instead, he joined an existing band of fellow Scotsmen and formed the band Lowlife (produced and managed by Brian Guthrie, brother to Cocteau Twin's iconoclastic guitarist, Robin Guthrie).  Lowlife had a long and distinguished career before disbanding in 1997, and I had never even heard about them.  So suddenly, I am able to download the music that was so dear to me.  (I had lost the cassette decades earlier.)

I still have yet to listen to any of the other albums in Lowlife's catalog, but I did download their debut album, "Permanent Sleep".  It is unique to become so captivated by an album that, released in 1986, is 28 years old!  And it stands up fairly well.  It has some markers of the early '80s goth scene of the UK, a bit like Siouxsie & the Banshees or Bauhas, but it has some of the precursors of the shoegaze movement which wouldn't emerge for another few years with bands like Lush or My Bloody Valentine.  In all honesty, this music is shoegaze before any such term existed.

That is me in the middle in 1986.  The cassette on the table is my first exposure to Cocteau Twins and Lowlife.

Yes, Will Heggie definitely took some of the Cocteau Twins sound with him to Lowlife, but, to be fair, he helped create that sound.  It is a well known that Cocteau Twins influenced many bands from the Sundays, Sigur Ros, Bel Canto, Phantogram, to even Coldplay.  But Lowlife can't be numbered as one of those bands, because they emerged right from Cocteau Twins.

As I listen to this music three decades later, it is easy to see the common thread that went through all of these bands - including Lowlife.  The melody is driven by the heavy double bass with the guitars, abstract and minimalist, used only to create atmosphere and a static texture, all held together by a low voice, crashing against all of the other sounds.  This comes right from Joy Division, the band that practically set the whole tone for underground music of the '80s.  I didn't see it then, but I see it now.

Songs of note are "Cowards Way", the title track, "Sometime Something", "Gallery of Shame", and my favorite, "From Side to Side".

If you are interested in innovative '80s music that never hit the mainstream, this this is a good album to check out.  I am surprised that, despite my limited exposure to it that it took me so long to locate.  This is truly a treasure trove.